EGRU Seminars

EGRU State-of-the-Art seminars are free online overview talks on topics relevant to economic geology and presented by experts in the field.

February 2022

Risk Qualified Mineral Resources/Reserves with Modern Geostatistics

Dr Clayton Deutsch

Professor of Geostatistics, University of Alberta, Canada

Resource and reserve estimation is essential for project evaluation and mine planning. The techniques and software tools have evolved over the years and we are getting better at quantifying uncertainty and transferring that through evaluation and planning processes. The current state of the art of resources and reserves estimation will be reviewed and future trends will be discussed.

Dr. Clayton Deutsch is a Professor in the School of Mining and Petroleum Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alberta. He teaches and conducts research into better ways to model heterogeneity and uncertainty in mineral deposits and petroleum reservoirs.

Prior to joining the University of Alberta, Dr. Deutsch was an Associate Professor (Research) in the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Stanford University. His employment history also includes three years with Exxon Production Research Company and three years with Placer Dome Inc.

Dr. Deutsch has published eight books and over three hundred research papers. He holds the Alberta Chamber of Resources Industry Chair in Mining Engineering and the Canada Research Chair in Natural Resources Uncertainty Characterization.

The State-of-the-Art seminars is a series of online overview talks on topics relevant to economic geology and presented by experts in the field.

July 2021

Applying Structural Geology to Hydrothermal Mineralisation

Professor Thomas Blenkinsop

Cardiff University, Wales

Strong structural controls on mineralisation are characteristic of hydrothermal ore deposits. These arise because the permeabilities of crustal rocks are too low to allow deposit formation on realistic time scales unless rocks are deformed. A thorough structural investigation involves geometrical, kinematic (displacement and strain), dynamic (stress) and rheological analyses: each step can make important contributions to understanding hydrothermal mineralization. This talk will advocate a workflow based on these steps, and introduce some recent relevant advances in structural geology. The focus is on gold, but most aspects apply to hydrothermal deposits in general.

May 2021

Application of Recent Innovations in Exploration Geochemistry

Dr Dennis Arne

Telemark Geoscience

This seminar will review the application of three recent advances in exploration geochemistry: the use of clay separates in the analysis of surficial materials, levelling of geochemical data for variable lithological background using principal components, and the application of machine learning to regional geochemical targeting. The advantages and limitations of these approaches will be illustrated through the use of applied case studies.

April 2021

Metallogenic and Exploration Insights using Metal Isotopes

Professor Ryan Mathur

Juniata College, Pennsylvania, USA

Professor Ryan Mathur will present the first of the EGRU State-of-the Art Talks. Ryan researches and teaches at a small liberal arts school in the Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania in the USA.  His interests are focused on developing geochemical tools to aid in exploration geology and to understand ore deposit process.

October 2020

Critical Minerals Geology

The last 10 years has witnessed a significant trend towards renewable materials driven by the ever-increasing demand for green energy, electric vehicles, energy storage, robotics and nano-technologies.  Major economies, such as USA, EU, Japan, South Korea and Australia have established  national strategies to deal with supply and demand, and to encourage exploration for these minerals.

June 2020

IOCG Deposits: occurrence and diversity

The IOCG (iron oxide copper gold) deposits comprise a diverse family of ore deposits having a wide range of metal content and geological characteristics.  The primary metal extracted from IOCG deposits is Cu with Au having a secondary importance. It is common for IOCG deposits to contain important quantities of U, REE, Ag, Co, Mo and many other metals in small quantities. IOCG deposits occur in a variety of tectonic settings, have been described from all continents and, from Archean to Phanerozoic terrains. Although, they share some common geological characteristics, their diversity in metal content, alteration assemblages, geological and tectonic settings makes exploration for IOCG deposits challenging.

May 2020

The tectonic and structural setting of Mt Isa Inlier – implications for deposit models and exploration potential

The Mount Isa Inlier of NW Australia is a giant metallogenic province that hosts world class Pb-Zn (±Ag, Cu), Cu-Au (±Mo, Co, U) and U-REE deposits. Although, the area experienced significant exploration activity and has been the subject to numerous academic studies, no major discoveries have been made for more than 20 years.  Given the lack of new discoveries, a critical assessment and re-evaluation of existing tectonic and deposit models is required.